Batch print pdf files over the web

[knford]

Please let me know if you have any ideas on how to perform this task. A user views a list of pdf files on a web page. They click a checkbox next to the files they'd like to have printed. A single print button is located at the bottom of the page. Once the button is clicked, the selected files, which are currently located on the web server, need to be printed to the person's local printer. I’ve tried php's printer_open() without luck. Another idea I had was to have the user download all files to their local computer, which is connected to their local printer, select all downloaded files, right click and choose print. How do you make the selected files download to a client's computer? Has anybody done this and know of a solution? Thank you for the help.

[Weedpacket]

For one PDF per response: if you preface the http response with the appropriate MIME extension (application/pdf) the client will (if it has a suitable facility for handling PDFs) use that facility. Printing would have to then be initiated by the user.

For multiple PDFs: personally, if I see a whole bunch of files I want I do a right-click-and-save-as (or a ctrl-click-to-open-in-a-new-tab) to all of them at once. Or I use the download manager extension I have installed.

If you want to get fancy, and if you can manipulate the PDF binaries, you could bundle all of the selected documents into one big PDF and serve that in the response.